BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq’s prime minister dropped his protection of an anti-American cleric’s Shiite militia after U.S. intelligence convinced him the group was infiltrated by death squads, two officials said Sunday.

In a desperate bid to fend off an all-out U.S. offensive, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr last Friday ordered the 30 lawmakers and six Cabinet ministers under his control to end their nearly two-month boycott of the government. They were back at their jobs Sunday.

Al-Sadr had already ordered his militia fighters not to display their weapons. They have not, however, ceded control of the formerly mixed neighborhoods they captured.

Saturday’s U.S. death toll climbed to 25 after the military reported Sunday that six more troops had died in the deadliest day in two years for U.S. forces. The latest reports said four soldiers and a Marine had died in combat Saturday in Anbar province and one soldier was killed by a roadside bomb northeast of Baghdad.

Nineteen of the deaths were reported Saturday, 12 in a Black Hawk helicopter crash, five in an attack on a security meeting in the Shiite holy city of Karbala and two others in roadside bomb attacks elsewhere. A statement released Saturday put the number of dead in the crash at 13 but was corrected Sunday.

Also Sunday, the Mujahadeen Army, an insurgent group active in Baqouba, claimed responsibility for the crash that killed the 12 U.S. soldiers, including four crew members and eight passengers. The claim could not be independently verified.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s turnaround on the Mahdi Army was puzzling because as late as Oct. 31, he had intervened to end a U.S. blockade of Sadr City, the northeast Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is headquarters to the militia. It is held responsible for much of the sectarian bloodshed that has turned the capital into a battle zone over the past year.

Sometime between then and Nov. 30, when the prime minister met President Bush, al-Maliki was convinced of the truth of U.S. intelligence reports which contended, among other things, that his protection of al-Sadr’s militia was isolating him in the Arab world and among moderates at home, the two government officials said.

“Al-Maliki realized he couldn’t keep defending the Mahdi Army because of the information and evidence that the armed group was taking part in the killings, displacing people and violating the state’s sovereignty,” said one official. Both he and a second government official who confirmed the account refused to be identified by name because the information was confidential. Both officials are intimately aware of the prime minister’s thinking.

Across Iraq on Sunday, police and morgue officials reported 46 people were killed or found dead. Twenty-nine bodies, most showing signs of torture, were found in Baghdad.

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